Global Concept:

Work

OHS Body of Knowledge

Global Concept: Work

April, 2012

Copyright notice and licence terms

First published in 2012 by the Safety Institute of Australia Ltd, Tullamarine, Victoria, Australia.
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OHS Body of Knowledge

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OHS Body of Knowledge

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OHS Body of Knowledge

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April, 2012

Synopsis of the OHS Body Of Knowledge

Background

A defined body of knowledge is required as a basis for professional certification and for
accreditation of education programs giving entry to a profession. The lack of such a body of
knowledge for OHS professionals was identified in reviews of OHS legislation and OHS
education in Australia. After a 2009 scoping study, WorkSafe Victoria provided funding to
support a national project to develop and implement a core body of knowledge for generalist
OHS professionals in Australia.
Development

The process of developing and structuring the main content of this document was managed
by a Technical Panel with representation from Victorian universities that teach OHS and
from the Safety Institute of Australia, which is the main professional body for generalist OHS
professionals in Australia. The Panel developed an initial conceptual framework which was
then amended in accord with feedback received from OHS tertiary-level educators
throughout Australia and the wider OHS profession. Specialist authors were invited to
contribute chapters, which were then subjected to peer review and editing. It is anticipated
that the resultant OHS Body of Knowledge will in future be regularly amended and updated
as people use it and as the evidence base expands.
Conceptual structure

The OHS Body of Knowledge takes a conceptual approach. As concepts are abstract, the
OHS professional needs to organise the concepts into a framework in order to solve a
problem. The overall framework used to structure the OHS Body of Knowledge is that:
Work impacts on the safety and health of humans who work in organisations. Organisations are
influenced by the socio-political context. Organisations may be considered a system which may
contain hazards which must be under control to minimise risk. This can be achieved by understanding
models causation for safety and for health which will result in improvement in the safety and health of
people at work. The OHS professional applies professional practice to influence the organisation to
being about this improvement.

OHS Body of Knowledge

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April, 2012

This can be represented as:

Audience

The OHS Body of Knowledge provides a basis for accreditation of OHS professional
education programs and certification of individual OHS professionals. It provides guidance
for OHS educators in course development, and for OHS professionals and professional
bodies in developing continuing professional development activities. Also, OHS regulators,
employers and recruiters may find it useful for benchmarking OHS professional practice.
Application

Importantly, the OHS Body of Knowledge is neither a textbook nor a curriculum; rather it
describes the key concepts, core theories and related evidence that should be shared by
Australian generalist OHS professionals. This knowledge will be gained through a
combination of education and experience.
Accessing and using the OHS Body of Knowledge for generalist OHS professionals

The OHS Body of Knowledge is published electronically. Each chapter can be downloaded
separately. However users are advised to read the Introduction, which provides background to
the information in individual chapters. They should also note the copyright requirements and
the disclaimer before using or acting on the information.

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April, 2012

Global Concept: Work

Dr Mike Rafferty BBus, BA(Hons), PhD
Senior Research Analyst
Workplace Research Centre (WRC), University of Sydney
Email: michael.rafferty@sydney.edu.au
Mike has undertaken research on work, labour markets, skills development, occupational
health and safety, and financial aspects of working life, including mortgage stress,
superannuation and retirement. He has also written on the shifting of life course risks from
employers and the state to workers and households and the growing role of financial
markets in managing those risks. Previously, he was MBA Program Coordinator at the
University of Wollongong. Mike holds a PhD in economics and has taught at universities in
Australia and Europe.

Sally Wright BBus, MIR&HRM

Senior Research Analyst
Workplace Research Centre (WRC), University of Sydney
Email: sally.wright@sydney.edu.au
In 2009, Sally joined the WRC Australia at Work project. For five years previously, she
was a National Industrial Officer for the Finance Sector Union. She has also worked in IR,
employment and VET in the NSW public sector, and as a consultant to NSW MERSITAB,
NSW TAFE Flexible Delivery Framework, UNESCO and UNESCAP. Sally's research
interests include union organising, pay equity, executive remuneration, the federal system
of workplace relations, organisational change and corporate social responsibility.

OHS Body of Knowledge

Global Concept: Work

Core Body of
Knowledge for the
Generalist OHS
Professional
April, 2012

Core Body of Knowledge for the Generalist OHS Professional

Global Concept: Work1

Abstract

The nature of work, its technical quality, and the social relations under which work is
undertaken have changed profoundly over time. So too has our understanding and thinking
about work and its place within wider society. This chapter explores developments in work,
working life and our changing understanding of work with a view to establishing a historical
context for current thinking about safety and health at work.

Keywords
work, working life, industrial revolution, division of labour, mass production, work in
Australia

The authors would like to thank Toby Fattore and Scott MacWilliam for assistance and advice in preparation
of the chapter. Particular acknowledgement is made to the reviewers and editor for very generous advice on an
earlier version. Special thanks are due to Pam Pryor for encouragement, support and patience in preparing this
chapter. The usual caveat applies to any remaining errors or omissions.

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Contents

Introduction ................................................................................................................... 1

Historical development of the concept of work ............................................................ 1

2.1

Pre-Industrial Revolution (before 1750) .................................................................. 1

2.2

Industrial and Social Revolution (1750 1850) ....................................................... 2

2.3

Post-Industrial Revolution (after 1850) ................................................................... 4

Factors shaping work in Australia .................................................................................. 7

3.1

Increased paid employment of women .................................................................... 7

3.2

Fragmentation of work ............................................................................................ 8

3.3

Demise of the standard working week .................................................................. 9

3.4

Determination of pay and conditions ....................................................................... 9

Re-emergence of the working poor ............................................................................ 10

Work and health ........................................................................................................... 10

Summary ..................................................................................................................... 12

References .......................................................................................................................... 12
.

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OHS Body of Knowledge

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1
Introduction
The nature of work is deeply implicated in individual and social life, and is therefore quite a
complex topic. James (1997) suggests that there are at least three ways of thinking about and
therefore conceptualising work productivist, instrumental/rational, and cultural/ontological.
In productivist terms, work can be thought of as efficient, purposive, socially useful
activity that provides or produces useful material or service for others. In instrumental
terms, work is not just about ends, but is also an externalized, differentiated, performative
activity (i.e. work is about means and ends). In ontological terms, work is practical
activity undertaken for the purpose of reproducing and enhancing social life (i.e. work is
purposive and performative but is also fundamental to social and cultural being). Each of
these definitions takes us in slightly different directions, and each is underpinned by a rich
intellectual and political/cultural tradition that stretches back to antiquity. This chapter
examines how the nature of work has changed and how this has changed wider social
relations, and our understanding of these concepts of work.
2
Historical development of the concept of work
The concept of work in its modern form evolved with the development of capitalism and is
closely associated with paid employment. Williams (1983) explained:
The specialization of work to paid employment is the result of the development of capitalist productive
relations. To be in work or out of work was to be in a definite relationship with some other who had
control of the means of productive effort. Work then partly shifted from the productive effort itself to the
predominant social relationship. It is only in this sense that a woman running a house and bringing up
children can be said to be not working (p. 335).

Even though feminism made the critical point that paid labour is contingent on much unpaid
labour, Williams point is that it is nevertheless implicit in contemporary understanding that a
woman who runs a house and brings up children is distinguished from a woman who works.
Similarly, to be in work or out of work, or to be injured at work implies a particular
relationship with the means of productive effort (the employer) and the means of acquisition
(the wage).

2.1
Pre-Industrial Revolution (before 1750)
In the pre-industrial period, there were clear social, political and economic differences
between those who worked and those who did not. Ideas about universal equality and civil
rights were then still marginal and yet to be translated into political form by radicals such as
Thomas Paine. From the point of view of those who did not work, but who lived off the work
of others, such as the aristocracy, it seemed logical and entirely natural to think about their
wealth in terms of how to maintain themselves via the work of others.

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This working other needed to be kept quite poor, because their poverty was understood to
be a disciplining force, both in terms of their claim on output and in keeping them engaged in
producing that output. In other words, wealth of the few was defined in terms of the poverty
of many. Writing seventy years before Malthus, the political economist, Bernard Mandeville,
advocated the benefits of keeping a large population of workers not only poor, but ignorant:
From what has been said it is manifest that in a free Nation where Slaves are not allow'd of, the surest
Wealth consists in a Multitude of laborious Poor; for besides that they are the never-failing Nursery of
Fleets and Armies, without them there could be no Enjoyment, and no Product of any Country could be
valuable. To make the Society happy and People easy under the meanest Circumstances, it is requisite
that great Numbers of them should be Ignorant as well as Poor. Knowledge both enlarges and multiplies
our Desires, and the fewer things a Man wishes for, the more easily his Necessities may be supplied.
(Mandeville, 1733).

2.2
Industrial and Social Revolution (1750 1850)
Two developments from the mid-eighteenth century presented a challenge to this existing
state of society - one political and the other economic. The political challenge to European
society came from political revolutions in France and America. These revolutions gave voice
to the idea not just of a better and more egalitarian society as a possibility sometime in the
future, but one that could be experienced/struggled for in the present. These upheavals also
provoked a radical restatement of conservative views, especially from writers like Thomas
Malthus and Edmund Burke. Malthus is usually remembered as a population theorist/futurist,
with the notion that unchecked, the human population will grow more rapidly than can be
supported (geometric population growth versus linear growth in food and shelter). But
Malthus major work (An Essay on the Principle of Population, 1798) was really
contemporary social theory. Though couched in the language of natural law, he sought to
deny the utopian and radical ideas that the lower classes can be made to live better and more
equally, and share in the government of society. Instead Malthus argued that attempts to do
so (such as charity, the poor laws and political emancipation) would be self-defeating
(Lohmann, 2003).
The second and related development was economic and involved a revolution in the
productive power of society, based on new ways of working, and the emergence of new types
of (industrial) workers. Ideas about work and its relationship to wealth changed radically
with the beginnings of industrial society. The publication of economist Adam Smiths The
Wealth of Nations in 1776 (the same year as the US Declaration of Independence) marked the
beginning of the end of the dominance of mercantilism in economic ideology. In the Wealth
of Nations Smith dramatically re-conceptualised work and wealth:
The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greater part of the skill, dexterity,
and judgment with which it is anywhere directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division
of labourIt is the great multiplication of the productions of all the different arts, in consequence of the
division of labour, which occasions, in a well-governed society, that universal opulence which extends
itself to the lowest ranks of the people.

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The industrial revolution is associated with both a spectacular growth in output as a result of
new industries and technologies, and enormous difficulties faced by the emerging urban
labour force at work and in their working lives. Much of the work undertaken in workshops
and factories was arduous and dangerous (Steams, 2007; Hopkins 1982). The poet, William
Blake, famously referred to these new factories as dark satanic mills (Preface to Milton a
Poem, 1804). Standards of accommodation, food, hygiene and health care in the industrial
cities were also often grossly inadequate, and caused human misery and death that threatened
to undermine the new industrial system. Conditions in Manchester, the contemporary heart of
the Industrial Revolution, were documented by Frederich Engels (The Condition of the
Working Class in England, 1844) and others. Later, in the United States, writers such as
Alice Hamilton (who held the first chair in Occupational Health and Safety a Harvard
University, and whose pioneering work is recounted in her memoirs Exploring the
Dangerous Trades, 1943) and Upton Sinclair (The Jungle, 1906) provided accounts of
working conditions in the factories in the United States that scandalised society, and helped
to give impetus to the first occupational health and safety legislation in that country.
In England, a series of Factory Acts introduced in the early-to-mid 1800s, transformed the
governments role in work by regulating who could work in factories (limiting child labour),
and in establishing minimum working conditions (with reference to, for example, air quality
and use of toxic chemicals) and maximum working hours (Bloy, 2011: Gray, 1987). In
addition to the growing regulation of workplaces and fledgling industrial relations efforts, the
origin of sociology, as August Comte termed this new disciplinary area, lay very much in
meeting the new challenges of reconciling the productive and destructive forces being
unleashed by this emerging industrial order. As Cowen and Shenton (1997) note, while the
question of social order in itself was not new, the industrial revolution changed the nature of
work, and working life and as such presented a challenge to social order. Sociology began as
a way of providing positive laws of knowledge to this problem of order. Most of the greatest
sociologists from then on, including Emile Durkheim, 2 Max Weber3, and Talcott Parsons4,
have tackled aspects of the social nature of work and working life, (or in the case of Veblen5
in the experience of those who live off the labour of others).
Some of the ongoing consequences of industrial life will be discussed shortly, but one way of
setting that dynamic of the creative and destructive forces in motion is to think about
different phases in the nature of work and working life since the industrial revolution, and in
our understanding of those developments.

Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, 1893

Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 1905
4
Talcott Parsons, The Social System and Toward a General Theory of Action, 1951
5
Thorstein Veblen The Theory of the Leisure Class,1899

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2.3
Post-Industrial Revolution (after 1850)
Adam Smiths prediction that an expanded division of labour would produce unimaginable
wealth came to fruition as workplaces assembled larger and larger numbers of workers in the
same locations, and mechanisation was generalised from steam to electrification and from
canal to railway and steamship. However, specialisation in production required many workers
to repeatedly perform a single activity and often under conditions of repressive managerial
control; and this presented obvious issues related to the immediate physical effects of the
work, and less obvious individual and social effects of the labour activity itself and the terms
under which it was performed.
One response was the development of forms of organised labour both at the site of production
through trades unions, and politically through nascent political organisations, which
organised and articulated the experiences and aspirations of workers (see for instance
Hobsbawm, 1964: Fitzpatrick, 1940: Thompson, 1966; Geary, 1981; Katznelson & Zolberg,
1986)
Another response to the problem of improving productivity while mediating industrial unrest
involved a focus on efficiency by an emerging technical and managerial stratum. For
example, the Gilbreths sought the most efficient bricklaying techniques (Gilbreth, 1909;
Gilbreth & Gilbreth, 1917). In the steel industry, Fredrich Winslow Taylor (1911) proposed
scientific management innovations that included a study of the coal shoveller to identify
both optimum shovel load, the best type of person best suited to the task, and the system of
reward that maximised output. The promise here was scientific determination of techniques
and systems of remuneration (especially piece rates) that both produced more output, and
permitted or promised a sharing of those gains. However as Meiksins (1984) has argued,
however while Taylorism as a technique promised a more systematic and calculative
approach to production, it was in many ways an articulation of the changing position of the
engineer and professional manager inside large corporate enterprises, rather than of the
(capitalist) owners. Taylorism was in part therefore an attempt to (re-)establish the control of
planning and decision making back into the factory by engineers and managers within the
changing social organisation of production.
2.3.1 Mass production and consumption the living wage
In the end, however, it was a radical restructuring of production by capital rather than a
professional project of technical refinement by engineers that ushered in the next phase of
industrial society. Henry Ford applied standardisation and a process technology approach to
production that was pioneered in meatpacking to the systematic assembly of motor vehicles.
Instead of craftsmen building whole cars, Fords Highland Park factory in Michigan featured
assembly lines that enabled semi-skilled workers to contribute one or a few tasks to a
collective labour process where the rhythm and pace of work was regulated by the line
(Lazonick, 1991, Williams et.al., 1994). In return for this transformed (and more
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monotonous) nature of work, Ford paid his (male) workers $5 a day, which was at least
double the going wage at the time (Lewchuk, 1993). This ushered in the notion of a living
wage, mass consumption, and the conception of workers as consumers as well as producers
(May 1982). Ford famously commented that he wanted to pay his workers enough so they
could afford to buy his cars. In his memoirs he recounted that, I believe in the first place
that, all other considerations aside, our own sales depend in a measure upon the wages we
pay (Ford, 1922).
Fords development of mass production (and of the expanding notion of the worker as
producer and consumer) found its economic counterpart in the writings of John Maynard
Keynes, whose approach to economic analysis focused not on individuals per se, but on
(national) society as a whole. For Keynes, the economy required both production and
consumption if stability and growth was to be sustained. Kay and Mott (2004) observed:
Keynes's theory of wages laid greater stress upon the wage as an element in the circulation
of capital than traditional neo-classical theory, which took wages one-sidedly as a cost of
production. The accumulation of capital requires not only a demand for goods produced but
effective demand, i.e. demand backed by the capacity to pay for the goods and services.
Fordism and Keynesianism became not just a way of understanding 20th century industrial
society; they articulated a project for managing its tensions in the factory, and in
society/economy. In 1929 in Selling Mrs Consumer, Christine Frederick declared:
Consumptionism is the name given to the new doctrine; and it is admitted to be the greatest idea that
America has to give to the world; the idea that workmen and masses be looked upon not simply as
workers and producers, but as consumersPay them more, sell them more, prosper more is the equation
(Frederick as cited in Rutherford, 2003).

However, the projects of both Ford and Keynes did not play out as harmoniously as
envisaged. Fords use of hired thugs and underworld figures to block union organising
initiatives and his fascination with Nazi Germany indicated that there were definite limits to
his pioneering approach (Frost, 2000). While Ford did much to revolutionise production and
consumption, in many ways he displayed the despotic approach to management that predated the industrial revolution. For Keynes, the promise of managing economic growth for all
(a rising tide lifts all boats) and dampening volatility worked surprisingly well for a time.
However, as bouts of recession and unemployment returned in the 1970s, the promise of
managing economic activity in ways that permitted both growing wages and high profits
(balancing what Keynes said was fair and reasonable between the classes) was challenged,
and eventually governments revisited the harsher framing of policymaking that Keynes
(1925) had criticised as submission of government to the economic juggernaut.

2.3.2 Evolution of management

As firms grew in size and technical complexity, more and more people became employed in
managerial roles. This presented new challenges for work. In the early phase of
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industrialisation, the business owner was typically also the manager; consequently, both
owner and manager were motivated by profit maximisation. With the proliferation of jointstock companies and complex corporate organisation, owners of firms had to employ people
to manage on their behalf. While specialist managers offered the prospect of technically
superior supervisory skills, the question was how to reconcile their interests as salaried
employees with those of the owners -a phenomenon known as the agency problem (Fama
1980, Fama and Jensen, 1983). It is now understood that having a managerial agent acting on
behalf of owners of a firm presents a dilemma because there is an inherent conflict of interest
between being an employee (with an interest in maximising ones salary) and acting on
behalf of the owner (whose interest is in maximising profits). Resolving this dilemma became
the province of management training, which rapidly expanded as a field of study, and the
development of management compensation systems which attempt to align the incentives of
managers with owners.
2.3.2 The rise of the welfare state
With the growth of national income, the growing organisation of labour in production, and
the extension of electoral franchise to working people, governments had to contend with
labour inside the state as subjects, rather just as objects of administration (Kay and Mott,
1982). The growth of branches of the state in improving working and living conditions in
housing, education, health and welfare and a greater universality in the terms of public
services followed (Dickey 1981). Australias welfare state took, however, a rather different
path from the British and that taken by other nations of northern Europe, which were devoted
primarily to the development of the social wage (i.e. social policy delivered by state
expenditures and activity) (Harris & McDonald, 2000). Different policy instruments and
levers were used in Australia, where the path was directed more towards securing acceptable
conditions of work and wage levels; though effectively only for male workers (Castles as
cited in Watts, 1997, p. 1).
As arbitration, better regulation of health and safety, and general improvements in the
standard of living were associated with the post-World War II period in Australia, the state
also began to absorb many other life-course risks. Generally, this is associated with what is
called the welfare state and what were then increasingly thought to be the expanding rights
of citizenship. Frank Castles astute observation characterised this as welfare associated with
work or in his terms a wage-earners welfare state (Watts, 1997, p. 3). As Castles notes what
differentiates Australias social policy:
from early on this century through at least until the early 1970s has been the fact that, in general, the
institutional arrangements used for the achievement of social policy objectives have been found not
so much in the functionally differentiated realm of social service provision, but rather in the domain of
mainstream economic policy-making, and most particularly, in the realm of wages policy. The
development of what is now often characterised as the wage earners welfare state has rested on
three aspects of Antipodean economic policy developmentThese three aspects were the attempted
control of wages through the quasi-judicial activity of the state (the arbitration system), the substantial

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use of protective tariffs to bolster wage levels in manufacturing, urban service industries and fringe
rural production (which became protection all around), and a strong concern with the regulation of
manpower through controlled migration with the aim of maintaining the bargaining power of labour
(the non-racist side of the White Australia policy and subsequent migration policy).
The simplest way of locating the essential difference between Australia and most other nations is to say
that, in Australia, wages policy, in large part, substituted for social policy, with the functional identity
between the two being denoted by the peculiarwage-setting mechanisms or such concepts as the fair
wage, the living wage and a basic or minimum wage set according to the Harvester criterion of the
normal needs of the average employee regarded as a human being living in a civilised community
(Castles, 1994 pp123-124) .

In more recent times, and since the collapse of Keynesian post-war consensus, the more
general nature of rights associated with the welfare state (such as free education and health
care) have been gradually eroded or withdrawn, and the link between work (or activity
associated with looking for work) and government benefits has been drawn increasingly
tightly. In the process, many life course risks in the labour market and in social policy are
being shifted back to labour and households (Hacker, 2007; Rafferty and Yu, 2010).

2.3.3 The Study of Work - Labour Process Research

The changing nature of work ushered in by the industrialisation of production (Taylorism,
Fordism and mass production more generally) became a field of inquiry in its own right,
studied under the rubric of industrial sociology, and what became known as labour process
theory an inquiry focusing on issues of power and momentums of skill in the workplace.
The seminal study in this field here is Harry Braverman, whose writing on managerial control
and labour resistance (notably his Labor and Monopoly Capital) at the workplace spurred a
generation of industrial sociologists to take the history and sociology of work seriously again
(see Braverman, 1974; for retrospective reviews see Meiksins, 1994, Thompson and Smith
2000/01). Among other things labour process research has established that the dynamics of
management-labour relation are complex and contested (Edwards, 1979), managerial control
is implicated in the dynamics of technological change (Child, 1985), and that management
requires the active production of consent (Burawoy, 1979; 1985).
3
Factors shaping work in Australia
Having discussed the historical developments in work and in concepts of work, the next
section considers the impact of recent factors shaping work in contemporary Australia. This
includes the increased paid employment of women, the decline in the standard working
week, changes to the determination of pay and conditions and the re-emergence of the
working poor.

3.1
Increased paid employment of women
One of the great social transformations during World War II, and after a brief impasse
afterwards, was the increasing participation rate of women in paid work; this enlarged the
pool of available workers and re-shaped the nature of work itself. Since the mid-1960s, the
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concentration of employment in the services sector has increased substantially. By May 2011,
employment in retail, accommodation and food services, and health and community services
accounted for 11 per cent, 9 per cent and 11 per cent respectively (ABS, 2011, June 16). Not
only do these three service industries now account for almost one third of total employment,
they are the areas of the Australian economy where jobs growth is strong. For example, in the
twelve months to February 2011, the largest increase in employment occurred in health care
and social assistance (up 98,700), retail trade (up 52,400), accommodation and food services
(up 35,000) and administrative and support services (up 32,100) (DEEWR, 2011). In
contrast, there has been a decline in the share of the traditionally male-dominated areas of
employment such as Agriculture, Mining and Manufacturing. For example, in May 2011,
these three industries accounted for 3 per cent, 2 per cent and 9 per cent respectively (ABS
2011, June 16).
Significantly, the increased participation of women in paid employment and higher education
has not eliminated gender segregation in work and pay. For example, using 2006 ABS
Employee Earnings and Hours (EEH) Survey data, Austin et al., found that, on average,
women earn 90 per cent of the hourly ordinary-time cash earnings of men (the raw gender
pay gap). Most of the low-paid industries recorded wage gaps that were greater than this
(Austen et al., 2008 p.19). One factor influencing this may be the greater availability of parttime work in certain industries and occupations. Industries employing a large proportion of
women include health care and social assistance, education and training, accommodation and
food services, and retail trade. The latter two industries are among the lowest paid (Austin, et
al, 2008:11-18). One of the largest industry gender pay gaps is evident in health care and
social assistance (where nearly 20% of working women are employed), while the finance
sector, another large employer of women, has the largest industry gender pay gap (Austen et
al., 2008 p.20).

3.2
Fragmentation of work
The changed composition of the workforce and the growth of jobs in the service sector have
been associated with an increase in the incidence of non-standard employment
arrangements, such as part-time and casual work, with the majority of these non-standard
jobs filled by women (ABS, 2009, June 30). In November 2010, almost 2.2 million workers
(about 20%) had no paid leave entitlements (ABS, 2011, April 29). Among part-time
employees, less than half (45%) of them were entitled to paid leave (ABS, 2010, May 21).
Short-term contracts, outsourcing, labour hire and independent contracting are all symptoms
of the growing precariousness of work. In November 2010, for example, 1.1 million people
in the labour force were independent contractors in their main job, representing 9.8 per cent
of all employed persons (ABS, 2011, April 29).

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3.3
Demise of the standard working week
Growth in insecure or precarious forms of employment has been compounded by changes in
working time arrangements. The standard working week, that is full-time hours undertaken
on weekdays, is no longer a reality for about two-thirds of workers in Australia; many are
working high numbers of (often unpaid) hours, while others do not have enough work (ABS,
2010). Furthermore, despite considerable national discourse about the need for greater
workplace flexibility, in November 2009 more than half (58%) of employees in Australia did
not have a say in their start and finish times (ABS, 2010, May 21). These data from the ABS
and recent findings from the AWALI study suggest that many workplaces lack real workerfriendly flexibility (AWALI, 2010 p.14).
The negative impacts of long working hours are exacerbated by increases in the time spent
getting to and from work. With more than 10% of parents in paid employment spending more
time commuting than with their children, family life and interpersonal relationships are under
considerable pressure (Flood & Barbato, 2005).
For many workers, technology such as laptops, the Internet, mobile phones and
iPhones/Blackberrys has led to the expectation that they will be available outside normal
working hours. This blurs the boundaries between work and life outside work. Increasingly,
many workers associate being available as part of what is expected for career advancement.
Research undertaken in the US found that Employees seem to be responding to company
expectations by using this technology to work longer hours (Fenner and Renn, 2010, p. 64).

3.4
Determination of pay and conditions
Also shaping the nature of work in Australia are changes in the way wages and working
conditions are determined. According to Stewart (2011):
For most of the 20th century, the overwhelming majority of Australian workers were employees whose
wages and working conditions were regulated by awards. Those awards generally standardised conditions
across particular industries or occupations.

However, changes in recent decades have included the introduction of enterprise-based

bargaining to replace awards, the reduction of the award system to a safety net and an
increase in the number of workers who are not covered by industrial arrangements, such as
contractors (Stewart 2011). Another significant change is a trend in the past 30 years [of]
people doing the same job but on different employment contracts, hence a separation of work
relations and employment relations (Smith, 2010, p. 277).
With the decentralising and individualisation of negotiations, traditionally vulnerable groups
in the labour market such as females, young workers and those from culturally diverse
backgrounds are less likely to be able to bargain for better pay or working conditions.

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4
Re-emergence of the working poor
The proliferation of insecure and poorly paid work has broken the earlier nexus between paid
work and escaping poverty. As a result, we have seen the re-emergence of a phenomenon that
was thought to be a relic of an earlier era the working poor. Journalist Barbara Ehrenreich
(2001) carried out a first-hand investigation of Americas working poor by undertaking
employment as a waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, nursing home aide and Wal-Mart
salesperson. She discovered that not only were these occupations mentally and physically
exhausting, but the pay from any one of these jobs was not enough to live on (Ehrenreich,
2001).
At the other end of the spectrum, there has been a spectacular increase in the salaries of
senior executives. In 2010, the ACTU reported that the average total remuneration for a chief
executive of a top 50 company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange was $6.4 million
almost 100 times that of the average wage (ACTU, 2010). Of relevance here is Pocock,
Skinner and Pisaniellos (2010) finding that there has been a redistribution of GDP from
wages to profits: the profit share of GDP is now at record levels in Australia. Rafferty and
Yu (2010) explained:
Despite strong labour productivity gains since the 1980s, returns to labour, as measured by real wages
growth, have lagged significantly... Conversely, the returns to capital have grown markedly over time.
Profit share expressed as a proportion of national income has grown from less than 35% to almost 45%
since the 1970s (p. 37).

As Pocock et al. (2010) conclude, while many households are giving more to paid work they
are taking home a declining share of its reward.

5
Work and health
As indicated in section 2, an important outcome of industrialisation was the introduction of
OHS laws and regulations. While the increasing regulation of workplace safety has resulted
in a significant and welcome decrease in the number of work-related fatalities and serious
injuries, many workers continue to face significant risks in the daily performance of their
jobs. In 2006-07, there were more than 134,000 workers compensation claims for serious
work-related injuries or illnesses (this includes death, permanent incapacity or temporary
incapacity requiring an absence from work for one working week or more); this equates to an
incidence rate of 14.1 serious claims per 1,000 employees (Safe Work Australia, 2010). Of
relevance is Safe Work Australias (2009) observation that:
Both international and Australian studies suggest that work-related injury and illness outcomes are worse
for precarious workers and that these workers are less likely to claim workers compensation for their
injuries than other employees. (p. 1).

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In a fascinating history of construction workers in Australia, Humphrey McQueen (2009)

probed an inherent contradiction in much discussion about OHS at work; that is, many
commentators are critical of various aspects of OHS law or practice, but few make the
connection between people killed and injured for profit (that is in paid work) and people
killed in civil society by, for example, a reckless driver or a crime of so-called passion. While
OHS violations may involve injury or death, they are still rarely treated as real crimes or
given the level of media or state attention that, say, drink driving or a random murder
receives (McQueen, 2009).
Generally, it is understood that the experience of work, especially low-paid work, can affect
workers physical and mental health and wellbeing6. Furthermore, poor work-life outcomes
also show a clear relationship to (self-reported) physical, mental and social well-being
(Pocock, Skinner & Williams, 2007, p. 4). In addition, Pocock et al. (2007) found work-tolife spillover to be greater for employees in poorer quality jobs (i.e. positions with low job
security, work overload, low time and task autonomy, lack of flexibility of working time and
low job satisfaction) (Pocock et al., 2007, p. 2). A recent study using Household, Income and
Labour Dynamics in Australia survey data (Butterworth et al., 2011, p. 1) found that those in
optimal jobs had better mental health than those in poorer quality jobs. There is now
widespread acknowledgement that decent, secure and interesting paid work is linked with
many potential health benefits. However, precarious and fragmented work has a greater
potential to be dangerous, stressful and alienating, and, as pointed out by Butterworth et al.
(2011, p. 1), gaining employment may not necessarily lead to improvement in mental health
and well-being if psychosocial job quality is not considered.
Significantly, inequality has been re-discovered by health sciences as a key factor in life
course health. Identification of work as one of the key sources of inequality, especially
following the work of Michael Marmot and others in the famous Whitehall studies of British
civil servants (Marmot et.al 1991)) reinforces Sennet & Cobbs (1972) notion that social
divisions created or sustained through work are responsible for both hidden and visible
injuries. For instance, the World Health Organisation Commission on Social Determinants of
Health (CSDH, 2008) noted:
there are dramatic differences in health that are closely linked with degrees of social disadvantage.
Differences of this magnitude, within and between countries, simply should never happen. These
inequities in health, avoidable health inequalities, arise because of the circumstances in which people
grow, live, work, and age, and the systems put in place to deal with illness...The development of a
society, rich or poor, can be judged by the quality of its populations health, how fairly health is
distributed across the social spectrum, and the degree of protection provided from disadvantage as a result
of ill-health.

Rose (2005) made the following observation about low-paid work in the US:

See BoK: Global concept: Health

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And although physical work is safer overall and more protected than in my grandfathers day, certain jobs
remain very dangerous witness the meatpacking industry and all are driven by intense schedules.
Hiring, firing, and advancement are, in some settings, less capricious than they were at mid-century, but
blue-collar and service workers still live in uncertainty and live, as well, with the occupational and social
assaults on dignity that Sennett and Cobb so aptly call the hidden injuries of class (Rose, 2005, p. 197).

Research and statistics on work-related injuries and illnesses indicate that there have been
some significant improvements in aspects of workplace safety and health although much
remains to be done on existing and emergent risks to make workplaces safe. It is also clear
that the quality of the experience of paid work itself (in terms of control, autonomy, job
monotony and satisfaction) can have a profound impact on worker health.
6
Summary
Work has played and continues to play a central role in the broader social relations of society.
An individuals experience of work (or lack of work), how and how much they are paid for
that work impacts on and indeed structures social relations, life course financial well-being
and health. Further, risks and tensions associated with work are long-lasting and can reemerge in similar forms, despite very different circumstances.
To return to the opening discussion of the concept of work, it is useful to think broadly about
work, it is a purposive activity, but not only that, it is also about producing something that
fulfills a need, but it is more than that too. Work is and continues to be a defining
characteristic of our social and cultural order. It is through understanding the interaction
between the nature of paid employment, of the ongoing pressures and antagonisms of
relations that these create and maintain, that we can see the context for health and safety both
as a profession and as a key factor in determining and resulting from the way we work and
the way work affects us.

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